Oh Darling Don't You Ever Grow Up, Stay This Little
by andy-ho13
Summary: In which Skye and Ward get their acts together and have a child. Fluff galore. Based on the post from skyewward on Tumblr.


**This was originally for skyewward on Tumblr, as a fic for her prompt:** I just can imagine Skyeward having an adorable little baby, and those two adorable idiots would literally fill the baby's room with toys and would just sit on the carpet and play with the baby for like hours and laugh and be total dorks because this is the childhood neither of them got to have, and they would be damned if they don't give their baby the best childhood ever. **So yeah, I totally deviated and wrote what I imagined it to be like if it actually happened. (Please, we all know it's not gonna happen in the show, but, a girl can dream can't she?)**

**Anyways, please read and leave a review if you feel like it :)**

**Disclaimer: I do not in any way own Agents of SHIELD, or the Taylor Swift song Never Grow Up. Is it wrong that I wish I did though?**

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They leave the bus after they learnt that Skye was pregnant. They bought a house close of SHIELD HQ in New York, a nice house in trendy Brooklyn, specifically Williamsburg after Skye's insistence that they don't live in Manhattan. plus she needed her artsy escape she said, knowing that grant would allow her anything as long as he deemed it safe enough.

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Skye's pregnancy was a relatively easy one. Easy enough that she could continue to work with SHIELD in communications while grant still went on his black ops missions. Even their house, one of those boho looking brownstones had a fully equipped gym in the basement and underneath that Skye's computer room with every wall literally covered in hi definition screens, each feeding a different channel of all the databases that she has access to. Not a bad life in all.

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It's 3am in the morning when Skye goes into labour. Of course it's fitting that grant is away, so after much cursing, she send a quick message to a woman that she knew would come, preferably bringing her other half as well. Sure enough 5 minutes late, the door swings open and Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton slip in, silent as always. She doesn't really remember anything clearly after that, just a haze of pushing, calm words definitely not from her and gnashed teeth.

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The only thing she really remembers clear as day is the lack of crying from her new born baby after her birth. The baby, a girl, looks around at her pseudo aunt and uncle before reaching up to grab Natasha's finger. The door once again swings open and AC, May, Tripp, Fitz, Jemma and _finally_ Ward file in, wonder and amazement on their faces as they drink in the sight before them.

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Their little girl is finally named, Xena Esme Ward, cos Skye totally won the argument, pulling the "I gave birth to your baby card" when grant refused to call his little girl after a character, but whatever, if it made Skye happy, he was definitely happy. The team leave urgently for a mission, promising to return immediately after the case, and they are left alone.

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Xena's first night was rather uneventful, Skye proving to be a natural around kids, cos after what seemed like a lifetime in the orphanage, you get used to caring for other children. She also totally disproved her idea of being a bad mother. They tuck her into her crib in the nursery that AC, Tripp, Fitz and Clint organised over the course of a few weeks when Skye and Ward were out of the house at appointments. They had filled her nursery with toys and clothes all in gender neutral colours, because in typical Skyeward fashion, they couldn't decide if they wanted to know the gender beforehand. The boys had only rolled their eyes when they heard.

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The team return exactly one week later, using the spare key entrusted to AC when they didn't answer to doorbell. They find the couple and baby Xena lying in a giant blanket and pillow fort in the living room, the interior littered with pillows, baby blankets and stuffed toys of all animals as they find Skye cuddled up to Ward with Xena balancing precariously on top of both sleeping forms, gurgling quietly to herself. Cooing to the baby, May lifts her off the sleeping couple as AC shakes them awake.

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The next time the team drop by, they find them again sitting in the giant blanket fort, this time all three awake, playing with the stuffed toys. Baby Xena's face lights up considerably as she see her aunts and uncles faces, her face morphing into that mischievous toothless grin complete with dimples when Jemma picks her up and cuddles her. She looks too much like Skye at this point, big brown doe eyes and short thick wavy brown hair that caught the light. The team bring her more toys, a little something from wherever they were this time.

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by the time Xena is a year old, each trip the team make to the Skyeward residence has always ended in a full out tea party, a circle of all her stuffed toys, her in the middle of her parents and the team in various places next to her toys. The team often tease Skye that she doesn't actually do her job anymore; her life has become one massive play date with her daughter. And when Grant laughs along with them, Skye immediately turns the tables on him, mentioning how he doesn't go on as many missions as he used to and that he is just as much of a sucker for their daughter as she is.

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In the end, Jemma succinctly sums up their jobs, while they love their jobs, they love their daughter more than life, watching her grow up, carefree, innocent and _happy_, all the things that _they _didn't get. So yes, every day is pyjama day, build a blanket fort day, dress up in cosplay day and tea party day. Because the key to happiness was living and creating the memories worth remembering, them finally having found their light after worlds of pain.


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